This invention relates to a method and apparatus for manipulating large sections of artificial turf and the artificial turf installation per se during manipulation, and more specifically to a method and apparatus facilitating repeated covering and uncovering of a rigid surface with such turf.
Artificial turf installations in recent years have become quite widespread for indoor and outdoor uses. In a typical convertible indoor installation such turf has been installed to removably cover a support surface in that it is repeatedly rolled up and stored after each use so the area underneath can be used for other purposes. For example, such a convertible system has been used in manually covering a basketball floor with synthetic turf sold under the trademark Astroturf.RTM. of Monsanto Company, where it is used for football practice and then manually rolled up and stored nearby in large rolls to expose the floor for use in playing basketball. Aside from the need for extensive manpower to roll out and roll up the large turf section, the drawback to this approach is the lack of an effective way to shift the large turf area about to remove wrinkles which develop during the roll up and roll out phases. For example, in one such prior art system one end of the turf was anchored to a building wall adjacent the floor being covered and uncovered. During roll up the fabric material in front of the developing roll would stretch so that when fully wound a wrinkle existed between the anchored trailing end and the roll per se. Because of the weight of the large roll, which when wound was on the order of four to five feet in diameter and over one hundred feet in length, the roll could not be conveniently pulled back after roll up to remove the wrinkle nor could it be conveniently removed with the section unrolled because of the large surface area and heavy weight involved. Since such stretching of the thermoplastic material of the turf occurred on the occasion of each rolling up, after an extended period the initial small wrinkle had grown in size to become annoyingly and wastefully large. This resulted in substantial unusable turf in the form of the large wrinkle and an inability to store the roll in the desired, compact, remote storage area adjacent the building wall because of the presence of the space-consuming wrinkle between the anchored end and the roll itself.
Thus a need exists in the prior art for a system to conveniently manipulate large artificial turf sections in a convertible installation involving multiple coverings and uncoverings of a rigid support surface.